September 2010

Sep 28, 2010

This is the first and probably the last post in September 2010. A lot happened in this passing month.

First, my MacBook Pro died (not the first time, BTW). This happened 3 weeks ago. It fried the graphics card. Some claim it was due to excessive StartCraft II action, I don't think it was related, since it didn't occur while playing. The machine just crossed the 3 years AppleCare extended protection plan, however, the problem is included in a replacement program. This means I'm going to get it fixed for free (quite a save, the part costs over a $1000). It also means I need to wait for the part to arrive from the states, which takes, well, forever.

In the mean while, I had to continue working. I have another Windows machine which I use for testing. It has almost identical specs to the MacBook Pro (in terms on CPU, GPU and RAM), but it is slow as hell running Windows XP. The first order of business was to install Ubuntu on it.

After almost a month in Ubuntu-land (10.04), I'm a pretty happy citizen. One thing is for sure: it is very fast. Most of my work is web-based and Chrome simply flies. Flash is also doing better, I can watch a 720p video from YouTube at full screen with no lag. Impossible on my Mac. I gave up on many desktop apps: couldn't find a decent email client or twitter app, so I'm just sticking with the web applications as much as I can. Eclipse works very well, as expected.

I miss a decent Evernote client and I really don't like the web interface. I also miss iTunes. And Sequel Pro. And my LaunchBar/Typinator/KeyboardMaestro shortcuts. It's hard to get over the unappealing user interface. When using a web application, it's easy to ignore it, since the focus is on what's in the browser and that's basically the same. However, when using other applications, it's plain ugly. The fonts are wrong, the UI elements look awkward and the big picture simply looks bad. Going back to OS X should be refreshing. Unfortunately, this won't happen before next week due to the holidays.

September was mostly holidays in Israel. It started with Rosh Hashana, the new year according to the Jewish calendar, followed by Yom Kippur. This gave me a chance to contemplate on what I'm doing and what I should to do next. The fact that I lost my laptop was another nudge in that direction almost like a cosmic voice speaking loud and clear. There are going to be some major changes soon and I'll blog about it when I'll get a clearer view.